


Early

by mettgabb



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Adoption, Gen, Pre-Slash, Runaway, Single Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 20:55:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9289277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mettgabb/pseuds/mettgabb
Summary: Phil’s daughter tries to find her birth father.





	

Lucille Lester’s mind wanders.

She remembers shuffling through her dad’s bookshelf, stumbling upon a paperback with a bleak cover. The phrase ‘Confessions of a Yakuza’ spreads in a hard, boring typography. Sometimes Lucille still wonders what about that book that had her captured, the Japan serenity amidst war and poverty or the haunting images of history? Both sound much too far-fetched to a youngster like her, lacking the sophistication that comes with experience and old age.

As she turned the cover blank page of ‘The monkeys’ money’ chapter, lying perfectly in between the top and bottom text of complex Japanese symbols she couldn’t grasp the meaning of, was a piece of paper, half-absorbed into that page. She picked the corner out with her nail. There was a phone number and apparently, an address, though she didn’t recognize the street name. Intrigued by what she knew from detective movies and books, Lucille put the book away and started to picture herself in an unforeseeable adventure.

_

It is so easy to pass apparent things as obvious, an easy mistake yet harmless in most cases, not in hers as it turns out. But how often do you see a teenager get sat down and given the talk on how they are biologically unrelated to their single-parent? Everyone just assumes theirs is the ‘normal’ family, either for lack of common knowledge or lack of true insights into their own family. Lucille has thought when the realization that ‘normal families’ have a mother dawned on her, it has put paid to the former cause and the ignorance altogether. DNA has other ideas, apparently.

It was such a regular dinner, albeit one of the few nights where Phil Lester managed to properly cook a traditional meal. They chat about her high-school with its dramatic stories and her dad’s animation project that would drive his close colleague, PJ, over repeatedly next several months. Such was the familiarity that when Phil eventually asked his daughter to the living-room, Lucille was in more of a confusion than fear and guilt over her past unknown misdeeds.

Phil sat with his feet flat on the floor. It was easy to forget his height of 1,88 metres when Lucille was so accustomed to seeing her dad hunching his back over the laptop and folding his legs on the sofa. His straight back and faint, barely visible, lines on the glabella were giving Lucille bad taste as she dropped down on the chocolate-colored armchair opposite, the same color as her eyes were one to observe closely. Phil’s pale lips pressed into a tight line while his jaw tensed up apparently, cheeks puffing. Soon enough, his chin dropped, he inched towards her direction and began to speak.

Lucille’s legs were crossed at the ankle, trying in vain to resist the tension her dad was exuding or, eventually, conceal it. She tentatively listened to her father’s low and consistent voice. But she had come underprepared. The words formed from Phil’s mouth were Medusa’s snake hair to her. The small shoulder hang motionlessly, tense muscles all over her body giving out. She wondered if the color draining from her face had been equally visible. By the time he finished, her limbs were barely hanging on the edges of the cushion, like a broken puppet would she be asked to draw an analogy.

Lucille Lester, haven’t a mother, at the age of 17, was told she isn’t related to her father, either.

_

‘I think I have his number and address written down. I can’t find it. If you really want to meet him, I think I can ask around for a bit, arrange a proper meeting?’

_

The five stages of grief came and went, elongated and accelerated at times by teenager hormones. Yet the scrunch Phil was trying to hide everytime her birthfather entered their conversations remained. Naturally, one day, daydreaming/doing her art homework that was perfectly unrelated to her heritage issue, the thought came to mind. ‘ah..’ Lucille carried on shading the orange, her biological father is probably not a good person.

Such idea came with light luggage, lurking in the corner and bringing no psychological crisis. So did another one. It was a subconscious thing, admittedly, Lucille searching for the birthfather, whose address she suspected was the one she found a while ago and for a train to London. She invested little mind into it, apart from the numerous ‘It doesn’t harm to’s and somehow, the plan to meet the man bringing her to life took shape. The address could be old, he could have moved. However, when the teen realized it, her bag was packed for 3 days 3 nights and she was holding a train ticket taking about 2 hours to the capital.

_

Lucille picks up where she has left off in the book. Eiji was at his low point in the army, with the chilling temperature breaking through the pages and what he underwent was sending her stomach to slight churnings. The last read somehow told her that, Eiji was growing and either he was going to rot to death in the army or he would escape from that freezing hellhole. She reaches the end of the page, yet doesn’t remember a word previously read. She re-reads that page in vain and repeats that same motion, at times with an index finger pointing to no avail, for the rest of the ride. The piece of paper holding her destination lies waiting among the last few pages, where she still doubted If the main character was going to have a happy and fulfilling life the way ‘Godfather’ was sold to her.

_

Dan Howell is an acclaimed Youtuber. His existence has permeated the Internet and, increasingly, tabloid journalism, which places him among the most desirable (allegedly) bachelor.

The man takes a look at an animated gnome, a close replicate of himself his fans have been tweeting him non-stop about. Accusations are too early to be made at this point but this is not the first time an organization has tried to leach off his fame and dramatic fanbase. Personally, he doubts they can do anything about it, seeing as the movie is not too offensive and there is virtually no way to confirm the artist’s intention drawing the gnome. With that in mind, Dan goes back to incessant scrolling on his private Tumblr blog.

The doorbell rings to Dan’s confusion. He doesn’t remember order anything since his latest embroidered jacket arrived. Nonetheless, he pushes the laptop down and comes to the door. A look at the peephole lets him know of a strange brunette teen standing on the other side. Immediately, his mind runs to his fanbase and the threat his privacy has to face becomes imminent. Dan stays silent.

‘I’m Lucille Lester, daughter to Phil Lester.’ There is voice from the other side.

The latter name gets registered to Dan’s brain. It sounds foreign on his lips and in his mind and makes his stomach churn. For a while, only silence replies Lucille but the girl is nothing if not stubborn. She sees the handling on her side turn down with a crack. Wordlessly, she holds her breathing as the door open and then open wide, revealing the Youtuber she has watched for relentless hours in her investigation. Standing before her now though, is neither that nor a hot celebrity, he is something else and that’s what Lucille wants to figure out.

‘Please come in.’

_

They both settle down in Dan’s living room. Lucille puts her backpack down the floor, silently turning on her phone’s location and putting on the number of the police. The man just takes time to observe his surprise guest. Lucille Lester gives off a vibe that is similar to Phil’s, cool and chilling yet underlying is a mass of colors and pure miscellany. Her face has got a soft tone to it, despite the apparent cheekbones and dark-colored eyes, edging on black in Dan’s brightly lit room. Her Asian features are spelling and with a change of light and view, almost indiscernible. She is half rubbing hands half folding them on her lap and the weird shape of her lips suggest she may be biting on the inside of them. Dan looks at her and wonder if Phil has changed much. His daughter is sitting here and it is so hard to tell what he remembers of Phil in her physical appearance.

Yet the strangest thing is the notion that Phil has gotten married and has a child together with some woman or man. That is simply unpalatable in Dan’s mind.

‘Is Phil-’

‘Did you impregnate a girl in your late teens?’ Her voice is dry and strained.

The following conversation has Dan turning into a bat. The girl’s voice dropping low is a perfect imitation of a hypnotist’s, forcing his bad memory of a messy period he thought he has left behind without a trace to resurface. For an articulate person, all that spouted from his mouth can barely be passed as gibberish. The conversation, in his mind, goes something like this:

‘Did you confirm that she had an abortion?’ - Phil’s daughter

‘What are you implying?’ – Dan himself

Dan: confused.

‘Did she actually kill the child?’ – Phil’s daughter (?)

Question: unanswered.

Dan Howell, famous Youtuber, arguably one of the hottest lads in England, apparently, has a teenage daughter.

_

_“I thought you were a bad, mean and stupid kid. But the heck, you are so nice to people on the Net. Why did you abandon me?”_

_

The doorbell rings by the time Dan has managed to cope with the sudden epiphany. Lucille drops her head down low and he can’t see here face anymore.

‘Please wait here.’

He needs that doorbell ring and to get away from that room right now. All that he ever runs from is catching up to him in one humanoid form, landing him into a morass of negative emotions. That doorbell ring gives him the perfect excuse to escape shortly from the situation. That’s what Dan likes to think anyway.

Standing to the other side of his door, a person he hasn’t seen or heard from in more than a decade and a half is on the verge of desperation and tears. If Dan straightened his back and held his breath, he wasn’t aware. Phil Lester wears a dusty jacket with a funny badge on the left chest and holds his only accessory, his phone, halfway to his ear. Time has been fair on him, making his features, bones and jaws, more prominent under pale skin. His hair is still dyed black, albeit shorter and messier than back in the day.

“Is she here?” Phil says. That is the correct vocal range, Dan thinks to himself instead of the common courtesy of immediate reply, with this, Phil’s voice in his head won’t be as distorted for a while. The homeowner nods, gesturing his second guest inside to the living-room, in case the guy doesn’t even remember his way around his old apartment.

Lucille shots her head up when Phil enters the room. Dan looks up from behind Phil’s back to peak at her expression. She is looking up, bushy eyebrows forming a tiny crease and lower jaw tentatively dropping. Between her slightly parted lips, Lucille draws a shaky breath, puffing out her chest. Phil aggressively strides towards his daughter, to which sight Dan, despite knowing Phil as gentle and non-violent for the years he knew him, prepares to intervene. Lucille just bares her face at her father approaching, gathering confidence to take her consequences.

For better or for worse, Phil drops in front of her, pulling her into a crushing hug and holding her head in his chest that smells of colorful clay and oil that he has been working on non-stop for a special episode of their animation. Lucille can feel his rapid shallow breathing from the way her messy hair is moving. Her back hurts and she can’t see her father’s probably red and teary face. What she does see is Dan Howell, sitting on the sofa opposite observes at the scene motionlessly, his eyes, telling of a broken heart and a puzzled mind, are the only thing suggesting he might actually be a living being capable of emotions and thoughts. Lucille thinks, through the watery layer on her eyes, Dan Howell may have dropped his eyelid slightly, unblinking and lost in the alluring unknown. He sits there, in the state of a near statue until Phil finally lets go of his daughter and turns back to face Dan. Her father’s face is solemn and without a trace of guilt for this gigantic lie he has been hiding from his old friend, to which, Lucille thinks she sees the flinch in Dan’s eyes.

Phil Lester turns to his child, brushing her hair clumsily, the way he has done so for the past fifteen years of her life and whispers, ‘There are things I try to hide. I will admit, little one, that I haven’t told you the entirety of the story the first time around, or the second time. I was scared you might not see that life is not simple and wouldn’t go the way you want, or your birthfather wanted. Before I start, I want you to know that I love you, child. That is the one thing that will remain true and untwisted.’

He takes a seat and offers his narrative of the story.

Lucille Lester, in many years of her existence, suddenly understands the reason her father has concealed the truth away. In a few words, it can be said that none but a near stranger wants her. Elaborated further, Dan got a girl he partied with pregnant and, in his teenage delirium, decided to ask for help from good ol’ Phil, who had previously moved away on a job offer and had to do a distant university course, for a shelter. Neither Dan nor girl C., her mother, wanted the kid, frankly, or raised the kid, specifically, both being teens themselves. A turn of events and religious impacts from Lucille’s biological maternity had girl C., without Dan’s knowing but with Phil’s, decide to give birth to the kid. After she more or less recovered from laboring, the mother took the money Dan had borrowed for the abortion and ran away, never to be seen by the two men again. Phil registered the birth, giving her the name Lucille, and put the child on a good foster house.

He soon moved back to his parents’ home, all the while abandoning all the dream yet nearly attainable jobs in Manchester. Long story short, he got a small property and a contract of a low-income job that would confine him to it for years. The combination somehow qualified Phil for adopting and a chain of kafka-esque procedures later, he got to bring Lucille home. By that time, she was already one year old.

It suddenly feels so pointless to go out of her way to meet the ‘birthfather’. Please, add an imaginary air-quote around that stupid world.

_

Dan feels incredibly thirsty yet he doesn’t want to move from that spot at the same time. War is erupting in his mind and everybody he has ever known get a bit of blaming and accusing within his mind palace. He ponders on what was done and what could be done, still sensitive as he is to the big elephant, what needs to be done and what will be done. Lucille hangs her head low and cowers slightly in her seat while Phil stares down at his thumbs, Adam’s apple bobbing. Dan invites the two of them to spend the night, seeing how Phil’s story has outlasted any trains or available planes back to their home up north. He goes to bed, cursing himself and cursing the world.

The old days living in blissful ignorance with Phil come pouring back. How people have grown.

Lying awake and staring at the ceiling is officially what the universe assigns him to do today. There are no answers to his problem on the ceiling. Dan Howell has always known what to do, his conscience knows what to do. The man knows he’s just scared of an unfamiliar realm. The image of Phil hugging Lucille close when he first came haunts Dan into his sleep, conjuring a bittersweet and nostalgic dream or nightmare, it’s hard to tell.

**Author's Note:**

> I intend for this story as a spin-off of a fic I'm writing. But there is a change in plot and this story ends up as an alternative to the fic. Do enjoy you read :)


End file.
